The leaves haven’t even begun to show a tinge of color yet, but fall officially arrives tonight in the form of high school football and area radio stations are ready for kickoff.

Foxcroft Academy, Dexter, Mount Desert Island, and Stearns of Millinocket are getting extra exposure as they each have their own radio networks providing live coverage from the season-opening kickoff to the last play of the year.

Other local teams like Bangor, Rockland, John Bapst of Bangor, and Brewer will get intermittent coverage during the course of the season.

Dover-Foxcroft station WDME (103.1 FM) renews its long association with Foxcroft Academy and Dexter High football at 7 p.m. Friday as the defending Eastern Maine Class C champion Ponies host Rockland. WDME will also air Dexter’s season-opener live when the Tigers host John Bapst on Saturday at 1 p.m.

“This goes back at least 30 years for WDME with Foxcroft and Dexter games,” said WDME sports director Toby Nelson, now in his 10th year as play-by-play man.

Nelson and color analyst Andy Conway, Dexter’s recreation department director, will mark an anniversary of their own tonight as Foxcroft-Rockland game will be the duo’s 150th together.

WDME will air all nine of Foxcroft’s regular season games, six Dexter games, 10 to 12 regular season soccer and field hockey games, and playoff games involving local teams in all three sports.

Bangor all-sports radio station WZON (620 AM) will be broadcasting games on the Internet (www.zoneradio.com) to start out this season due to its commitment as a Boston Red Sox radio network member and conflicts with Red Sox broadcasts.

“We have to do that most years. It’s not unusual,” said program director Dale Duff. “Our tentative schedule has us doing 10 high school football games with about half being on the air and all being on the Internet.”

The Sports Zone’s first game is Lewiston at Bangor tonight. Its second game (Saturday’s John Bapst-Dexter game) will also be bumped exclusively to the Internet due to a conflict with – of all things – a broadcast of the New York Yankees’ game with Minnesota … as if Red Sox fans didn’t already have enough reasons to hate the Yankees.

“We signed on to do a Major League Baseball game of the week with the Yankees and Twins because at the time we committed to it, we thought it would mean something for Sox fans,” Duff explained. “That was one of the games we saw as a good one to carry, given the wild-card implications with the Twins and the Yankees obviously being in the playoff race.”

Since that time, however, the Sox have all but eliminated themselves from the playoff race, but WZON has to honor its radio commitment.

Duff said WZON will also air some boys and girls soccer and field hockey games this fall.

“We’ll wait and see what we can get for good local matchups,” Duff explained.

For the second year in a row, Bangor station WABI (910 AM) will not air Bangor High football games after doing so continuously since the mid-1950’s.

“We really haven’t had the community support for doing the games the last two years,” said Jeff Pierce, Clear Channel Maine director of operations. “By community support, I mean advertising and listeners.

“Last year was the first year we didn’t do the games and no one called us about it.”

Fellow Clear Channel station WFZX of Bar Harbor (101.7), however, is providing broadcasts of all MDI Trojans football games.

Pierce wouldn’t rule out airing Bangor or other high school football games in the future.

“Again, I go back to ad support,” he said. “That’s pretty much the deciding factor.”

Other stations with live football broadcasts are Millinocket’s WSYY (103.9 FM), which is doing all Stearns games; and Rockland’s all-sports WRKD (1450 AM), which is airing Rockland, Lawrence of Fairfield, Waterville, Winslow, and Messalonskee of Oakland games.

Andrew Neff can be reached at 990-8205, 1-800-310-8600 or at aneff@bangordailynews.net